Comic Pants Podcast #49
It’s time to shine the spotlight on recent events for Marvel’s two big franchises: Spider-Man and the X-Men. Spidey we’ll cover next podcast, but this time out Randy Lander, Dave Farabee, Nick Budd, David Martindale (D3) and Dan Grendell gather to discuss the X-Men franchise. More specifically we discuss the just-completed mega-crossover, “Messiah Complex,” and the new status quo for the X-books it leaves in its wake. Has the X-franchise won us back with its new direction? What were the highlights and lowlights? And will Randy ever stop whining about the artwork of Humberto Ramos and Chris Bachalo?
The answers might just surprise you (except for that last thing; of course Randy won’t stop whining).
As always, commentary is welcomed and encouraged. Let us know what you thought of the podcast, and if you have suggestions for future podcast topics, leave us a comment or write in to the show! Please drop us a line to give us some questions or comments for the next show.
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Just as a weird sort of suggestion, unrelated to the topic…remember the Halloween podcast you guys did, like, two years ago? (I’m surprised I do :D) It would be fun if maybe next year you could do a Valentine’s Day-themed podcast to talk about romance comics, both indie ones like Blankets and True Story, and perhaps even fun romance stories found in mainstream superheroes, like Ultimate Spider-Man. ‘Cause I’m a big softie for that genre.
16 Feb 2008 at 5:35 pm
QuoteDarwyn Cooke’s issue of Spider-Man’s Tangled Web = best Valentine’s Day comic ever.
16 Feb 2008 at 7:16 pm
QuotePeople will disagree with me, but that was probably the best Darwyn Cooke comic ever.
(Actually, I haven’t read The Spirit yet, so I’m shooting myself in the foot, but I have read his Batman, Catwoman, and New Frontier)
Having now listened to the podcast, I can’t say I was too enthusiastic about Messiah Complex because I generally don’t like the stories that are about wrapping up previous continuity. Yeah, it’s true that the baby’s story was new and that was the driving force, but it still felt more like a set piece to clear up all the issues that have been floating around the X-books for the past year or so beforehand.
Am I excited about the new status quo? Ehh…not really. The X-Men will indeed never be what it used to be - the Claremont era - but I honestly hope that the X-Men will go back to the Morrison era, which is really the modern equivalent for me. I want to go back to mutant culture and subtle genetic discrimination and all of that. And since Ellis is definitely the kind of guy who can go in a Morrisonian direction, it’s his Astonishing X-Men that I’m actually most excited to see.
The new status quo doesn’t feel like anything exciting to me, honestly. It’s simply a few new directions that don’t really have any legs. I could turn around on this, just like I turned around on the Initiative books, but I did generally have more interest in the Initiative concept from the outset than I do about the new X-books.
16 Feb 2008 at 8:26 pm
QuoteWhoever blamed the goryness of it all “Because Brubaker likes to kill people off” or whatever was said - is way off. Who has Brubaker had killed since he has been at Marvel? Banshee and Cap? That is about it. Now how many deaths have Craig Kyle and Chris Yost racked up in New Xmen? They might be who I would pin the gore factor of Messiah Complex on, not Bru.
16 Feb 2008 at 9:41 pm
Quote*sigh* You guys would discuss Messiah Complex of all things. I’ve got a stack sitting here of Uncanny and Adjectiveless that i’m waiting to read until I can get ahold of the X-Factor and New X-Men issues. I was just gonna skip those, but once I started reading, my nostalgia for the 90s crossovers kicked in (child of the animated series here) and I decided I wanted to read the whole thing. Guess I’ll have to hold off on listening to this one.
16 Feb 2008 at 10:04 pm
QuoteI won’t deny that Kyle and Yost had their kill cap on when they wrote New X-Men, but don’t discount Brubaker’s love of the noir.
You can’t just look at the character deaths, there’s always a higher bodycount in a Brubaker book. Look at all the SHIELD agents getting gunned down by Crossbones and his red-headed girlfriend, or that poor dumb bastard DD’s wife shoved in front of a train because she didn’t like the new office girl.
OK, that’s me putting it as facetiously as possible, but basically I think Brubaker has a tendency to let his noir sensibilities run a bit wild on his superhero stuff. He’s such an excellent writer that it tends to work regardless, but I’d enjoy it more if he’d rein in the death and gloom a bit.
He has also shown a tendency towards the “death makes this story more important” style of writing that is dominating the industry these days (Banshee is a *great* example, Corsair an even better one), which tends to write out perfectly good characters in the name of cheap (and rarely effective) shock value. I usually like Brubaker’s stuff in spite of the cheap deaths, not because of them.
I won’t pin the high bodycount of Messiah Complex only on Bru, but he is the one who wrote the baby-slaughterin’ opening, I think he’s gotta take at least some of the credit/blame.
17 Feb 2008 at 12:58 am
QuoteI’ve only listened to a third of this podcast and will check out the rest at work tomorrow. But I just wanted to say that “Mr. Sinister” after all these years is still an incredibly stupid name, and I guess one doesn’t always realize this until one hears a podcast in which people say that name aloud with (somewhat) straight faces. In fact that character may have marked the early stages of the drying of Claremont’s well of ideas (though he did have some great stories after it).
17 Feb 2008 at 2:24 pm
Quote17 Feb 2008 at 2:27 pm
QuoteSupposedly Claremont originally intended Mr Sinister to be the creation of a child from the orphanage Cyclops came from, which is the reason for some of the goofier aspects of the character. He left the series before he ever got around to that reveal. (Claremont was known for introducing plotlines where the payoff didn’t come for years)
Personally I like it when they simply refer to him as “Sinister”, but then this is the same universe where the greatest villain is named Dr. Doom, so it’s not so much of a stretch anyway.
17 Feb 2008 at 3:32 pm
Quoteyeah and Doom IS’nt eVEN a doctor
17 Feb 2008 at 3:39 pm
Quotelistenting to the podcast
I’m in a wheelchair as such prof x is the reason I read the x-men. The man needs his own series
17 Feb 2008 at 10:59 pm
QuoteLike some others I think I’m just burned out on the whole X-men thing. I know one of you guys brought this up the last time, but I think Marvel missed out buy not sticking with the population boom and mutants coming into the mainstream vibe Morrison set up. Now that was a new direction and a fairly logical one that built on what had come before.
Anyway this isn’t exciting, me, they’d have to do something pretty amazing to regain my interest and this just isn’t it.
As to an iconic X-man, I think you guys are right in that no one character is necessary for the X-men to work. My personal favorite X-man has always been the Beast, though I think he worked better as an Avenger and while I liked much of what Morrison did, his change from ape like to cat like didn’t do anything for me.
18 Feb 2008 at 8:50 am
QuoteHaving listened to the whole thing now, I wish you guys had talked more on where the books are headed, but it was interesting.
The X-Men are a “never can go back home again” book for me. I was all about the X-Men from age 9 to about 17 in the 80s and early 90s, but I have a really hard time reading them as an adult (as opposed to something like Daredevil, which I loved as a kid and can still read). Aside from the early Whedon issues and a bit of Morisson’s run, it’s all just a bit too nostalgia-based, melodramatic, and convoluted for me. Even this recent Brubaker issue that people are raving about just seems like Claremont-lite to me, rehashing stories, subplots, and settings that were fresh and new during the Reagan administration.
Grant Morrison’s run wasn’t perfect, but it did lay down a blueprint for moving the books past Claremont. I’m still stunned that Marvel simply threw that out the window.
18 Feb 2008 at 12:19 pm
Quoteok numbered list time
1. Morrison’s X-men had interesting idea but left it unwritable for the next writer. For crying out loud he blew up New York in a Marvel comic!
2. while writting a Terror inc pitch I came up with a team I really like Cyclops, Wolverine, Colossus and a little help from storm and Rouge.
3. as a guy whose favrote group is the Fantastic Four and whose fave line up of Avengers is the very first. I ALWAYS had to be in the mood to read x-men otherwise the huge cast got on my neves.
18 Feb 2008 at 1:56 pm
QuoteBut they kept Morrison’s take for a while after he left, wasn’t until Wanda said, “no more mutants”, that things REALLY changed.
Like Bob said, it was a good blueprint that was just tossed, and in a way that just caused all sorts of confusion, for both writers and readers, Iceman lost his powers, no wait he was just having a panic attack.
18 Feb 2008 at 5:09 pm
Quotedon’t get me wrong I LIKED a lot of Morrison did. Blowing up Genshoa was a good idea. Genosha being the “Mutant as Minorty” pushed WAY too far. UM guys black people in South Africa cant lift buses.
But there was a lot that I did’nt like too.
18 Feb 2008 at 5:27 pm
QuoteWhat Morrison did was keep it so that mutants were feared and hated. If there are 90 mutants in the world — a world with the likes of Dr. Doom, the Red Skull, Mephisto, Loki, and Galactus — why would people really be afraid of them? But if there are thousands of mutants and a growing population, that implies that humankind is dropping down the totem pole of relevance and power, with extinction around the corner. Well now…that might be a bit frightening and threatening.
I also liked how Morrison (and Quitely) made mutants ugly and freaky. For some reason as I’ve gotten older I’ve prefered the idea that mutants would be like Morrison’s Special Ed class or the Morlocks, rather than these smoking hot babes that reek of sex. At least making them disfigured or weird really sells the idea that they are outsiders.
18 Feb 2008 at 5:29 pm
Quoteyes THAT was good point. It often made me gigle a little that Jean greay felt “feared and hated” Also I dont think helped too much that the only one hanging out with humans regularly was Wolverine
18 Feb 2008 at 5:48 pm
QuoteHonestly, at this point we’d only seen X-Force, X-Factor and Uncanny, so it’s still hard to judge where they’re going. If all of the other directions they’ve had since, well, since Claremont left, are any indication, where they’re going is “scattershot good issues with general mediocrity leading up to another reboot that throws the baby out with the bathwater.”
Which is to say, I wholeheartedly agree with both you and Gray on this:
I’m still stunned at the way they systematically erased every change he made. Xorn? The Special Class? Magneto being dead? Genosha being wiped out? Mutants as pop culture? The X-Men as global rescue organization? X-Corp? All of it, not just ignored but willfully erased in favor of things that are less interesting.
At this point, the only thing that remains in continuity to show that Morrison’s run ever existed is cat Beast. And most folks aren’t fond of that, so I’m guessing it’ll get undone at some point too.
I own two X-Men runs in hardcover. One is the beginning of the classic Claremont/Byrne X-Men run in Omnibus format (and I’m really hoping there’s a volume two someday) and the other is New X-Men in three hardcovers. Morrison’s run, while flawed, was the best the X-Men have been since Claremont in his prime, and did a great job of advancing the concept without just destroying it at the same time.
So of course, it’s mostly gone now.
18 Feb 2008 at 10:57 pm
QuoteI’m always on the lookout for older trades. After reading this, I decided it’s finally time to check out some older X-Men, specifically the Claremont era. I checked out the Omnibus vol. 1 but it looks like it is out of print and it stops before the Dark Phoenix Saga. And I always hear how that’s the greatest story… so I tried to find one that includes the DPS.
I think I might go for Essential X-men Vol. 2. It misses the beginning of Claremont’s run, but it looks like it contains the Dark Phoenix Saga and the beginning of Days of Future Past. Anyone agree? However, it looks like it might be in black and white (no color). What the F@#$? Why would they do that? Is it still worth it? Or does anyone know of any other trades that include the aforementiond Claremont run?
19 Feb 2008 at 1:47 am
QuoteAs for the Essentials, I get every one of them that comes out. For the number of books in them, at sixteen bucks, color would be impossible, and honestly, I rarely miss it as I’m reading. Of course, if you want the X-Men Dark Phoenix Saga TP, you could just buy that. I just checked Diamond and it is in stock and available for order at 25 bucks.
You could also track down the 40 Years of X-Men DVD-ROM by GIT, which has every Uncanny issue and Annual up through August of 2005 in PDF for about fifty dollars, but since GIT lost their license from Marvel those are becoming more and more scarce.
19 Feb 2008 at 2:22 am
QuoteWell, I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one whose reaction to Messiah Complex was “boy, I really miss Morrison”
Though a lot of his ideas were thrown out the window, I actually think it’s possible to bring them back. Yes, the number of mutants - a key point of his theme - has greatly diminished, but we sure still see a lot of mutants, and considering how some of the depowered have recovered their powers, it wouldn’t be too hard to raise the population again.
I’m honestly still hoping that’s what Warren Ellis will do. Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men, to me, felt like it was carrying in the spirit of Morrison, so maybe Ellis will want to continue in that mold. And he’d be far more suited to it.
19 Feb 2008 at 5:30 am
QuoteDamn it all to hell, you guys are gonna make me pick up X-Men titles again! Crap!
20 Feb 2008 at 9:56 am
QuoteThanks Dan for answering my question. I think it’s cool you guys answer questions like that rather than ignore the responses.
21 Feb 2008 at 1:02 am
QuoteThanks. We don’t get ‘em all, but we certainly try.
21 Feb 2008 at 2:00 pm
QuoteAfter reading Messiah Complex I really felt the need to go back and reread the entire run of Akira. I think that’s what I was hoping for; a much more defined group of factions with their own visions of what the child meant, kicking the shit out of one another. In a way, it seemed like they were going in that direction but just sort of bailed out in the end. I know that’s probably not a realistic wish, but it would have been kind of neat to see the X universe in a way where no-body was wrong and populated with zealots and maniacs.
22 Feb 2008 at 6:50 pm
Quotei’m listening to this and i can’t believe how upset some of you were about dead babies. what would you expect of villains? maybe you’re not as bothered by all the gore and death as you are by the lack of reaction from the x-men. they barely let out an “oh my god” before moving on.
i agree that x-factor was drawn in unnecessarily, since they only seemed to need madrox, layla and rictor. new x-men i felt needed to be there because of the revenge against the purifiers aspect. made sense. but it seemed like over the 13 issue crossover there were too many battles between teams. in a 13 issue run of a single series there may have only been 2 or 3 major battles. and that’s how messiah should have run. major battle, then withdraw to re-assert themselves and build morale, establish some crap like WHY cyclops wants that baby enough to kill.
the only art really worth looking at was in x-factor, though all the strongest images that i remember in hindsight were ramos’ so maybe he’s not so horrible.
i’m VERY disappointed by messiah complex. it could have been a good story, but they mangled it instead for the purpose of a linewide restructure. lame.
26 Feb 2008 at 10:12 am
Quote